


Kirk and the Monk

by Gyptian



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: M/M, POV Outsider, Religion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-07
Updated: 2014-05-07
Packaged: 2018-01-23 22:56:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1582436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gyptian/pseuds/Gyptian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kirk is the captain that thinks the world of Spock. A monk is a man who thinks the world of God. The two meet, and one has eyestalks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Kirk and the Monk

Teree held his eyestalks downcast. His bare feet slid across smooth marble in a devout shuffle. His hands trembled in their clasp in front of aqua robes. Godfear fluttered in his stomach. It had been a cathartic confession, a heartfelt cleansing.   
  
"Spock." The name was drawn out, full with laughter. Teree could not help but lift an eye up.   
  
The gold-furred mammal was standing further down the corridor, speaking into a metal box. He was one of the offworld visitors of the queen, he remembered. Cap Tin Kirk, their leader.    
  
"Oh, save the lecture for chess! Just give me the coordinates of the group already." He paused while indistinct chatter issued from the box. "Of course I wandered off, what do you take me for?" More chatter. "Relax, I'm fine. These monks are dedicated pacifists. You'll like 'em when you beam down tomorrow."   
  
A flush of pleasure put out the fear burning in Teree's stomach.   
  
Cap Tin Kirk closed the lid on his box after he received his answer. He held it in his pink-skinned claw while he let the light from a large window warm his flat face.   
  
Teree, to his surprise, recognised his mood. It was the Contemplation of the Divine. A time when a being paused in their actions because they were struck by awe. It was characterised by relaxed lack of motion, a gaze that saw nothing and a general air of surprise and happiness. A revelation of beauty and complexity had been visited upon this alien. With a lift of his three hearts he realised it would be his duty to assist in this Contemplation.   
  
With care, he approached Kirk, asking in a soft burble, "What has pleased you, Cap Tin?"   
  
Kirk shifted his head so he could aim his inset eyes at Teree. The light of Plor made his pink skin nearly red. "Oh, ah, just thinking over the conversation I just had." He showed his teeth, but not aggression. Teree decided to ignore it.   
  
"What has drawn you into Contemplation?" he asked. "Something caught your mind." He unclasped his hands and put three fingers forward. "It made you pause, thus I came to see. Such moments are treasures."   
  
The mammal Cap Tin Kirk absorbed these words, thought over them in silence. Teree felt honoured by the weight of his attention and his hands clasped in a meditative triangle. 

 

"I... that's a good way of putting it. I hadn't thought about it like that." He spoke again after another pause. "Spock... is precious to me, but I find myself struggling with ways to express it." He turned his face away. "He is a telepath, with a strict lifestyle."   
  
"You thought not of that last part, however. Just the first." The man had been too much at peace. Teree was confirmed in this when Kirk showed his teeth again and a glow of deep happiness flourished in him. Teree let his eyes sway when the joy rolled over him. It was so powerful, all the monks in the building would be blessed with the sensation.   
  
"Yes. It's hard to put into words." He put the box into a pouch in his belt.    
  
Teree nodded. "Silence fits best, I have found." The being did not leave, so he hesitantly proposed, "May I join you in your Contemplation?” 

 

Kirk clasped Teree's shoulder with a pink claw. To his suprise, the alien's appendage was soft. Made of flesh, perhaps. “Yeah, sure.” He turned his gaze to the outside world again. Teree mirrored him, so that the sun could outline two shilouettes, a Pouy in aqua robes and a Human in golden tunic and trousers. 

 

When the Contemplation ended, Kirk began to speak. “My grandparents were baptists,” he began in a voice deep and soft as a youth's. “They brought me to religious ceremonies sometimes, and there was always such a peace about it. Never thought I'd find that a far way from home.”

 

Teree lowered a curious eyestalk towards the mammal's profile. “I am honoured to be able to share the peace of God with you.”

 

Now Kirk shook his head. “I don't believe in God.”

 

“You have touched the divine, by seeing the value of another creature.” Teree raised the triangle of his fingers to the heavens in silent praise. “To treasure creation and our fellow beings, such is the ultimate service we may render Hir.”

 

Kirk made a noise. “If you want to see it that way...” He turned around to lean against the windowsill. “Hir? Your God isn't a he or she?” 

 

“Ze has no body.”

 

“Good point.” Kirk cast his head up now, “My party must be nearing the end of the tour, by now, Spock said I could catch up with them at the exit.”

 

Teree cocked his head. “You did not return to them immediately.”

 

“No...” The man scratched the fur topping his head with a claw. “Sometimes I need... a break.”

 

“I see.” Teree bowed. “Then I hope you have found the peace you sought.”

 

Kirk showed his teeth again, for the third time in a positive context. Apparently, it conveyed pleasure. “Oddly enough, yes.” He returned the bow. “Will I see you tomorrow?”

 

“Yes. All signing ceremonies are hosted here, so that they proceed peacefully.” 

 

They closed the greeting with a simultaneous bow.

 

~'~

 

“I object to such unnatural displays!” a Sentinel, a leader of the queen's honour guard, said to a squat noblewoman that stood beside Teree. His broad shoulders and short eyestalks, only long enough to swivel, really, marked him as one of the warrior class. He waved his four arms and rained down insults and curses upon an undefined target. “A man should master a woman!” he proclaimed, only to make his companion flick open her fan to have screen against the spittle.

 

Teree cringed in the presence of such verbal violence. 

 

“Emasculating! These aliens should keep their perversions to themselves!” Now one finger clearly pointed. Teree followed it with one eyestalk to the Enterprise's delegation, where Cap Tin Kirk stood close to another man, whom he had introduced as his “conscience and guiding light, my first officer, Com Man Dar Spock,” earlier in the evening. 

 

Their claws touched, but that was the extent of their intimacy, and that was remarkable only because Teree knew one of them to be a telepath. 

 

He considered opening his mouth to ask the Sentinel to clarify himself, or change the subject, but closed it again. Because on the other side of the Sentinel stood the head of his order. Who had proclaimed all beings should be joined man to woman. 

 

Besides, he knew not whether the Cap Tin was friend or partner to the Com Man Dar. It made little sense to defend a couple if it did not exist.

 

So he swallowed his words.

 

Swallowed them later in the evening too, when all had moved on from the ceremonial hall to the next, to eat from the buffet in the next room, and Teree heard others mutter about the arm the Cap Tin had slung around his Com Man Dar's shoulder for a moment. 

 

He closed his eyes when his opinion was solicited. Deflected that judgment was God's prerogative, which satisfied his fellow monk.

 

He could not unite the accusations spoken this day with the Contemplation he had witnessed the day before. Surely, surely if God saw fit to open the Captain's eyes to the beauty of a fellow creature, whatever its shape or gender, it was a union blessed?

 

He could not imagine a man to be attractive, but neither was the brown-skinned woman among the mammals. They were so very different. And he could see the beauty in his grandsire, who was kind but covered with mucus, at his age, while a hateful being, beautiful though ze was, became ugly. This was God's wisdom also, that though glamour could catch an eye, a person's soul quickly outshone it, the longer you knew someone.

 

~'~

 

“Heya, er...” said a voice behind him. Teree turned to see the Cap Tin. “You know, only now do I realise I never asked you what your name is.” Next to the Cap Tin, the Com Man Dar. A man with a skin tinged the palest of greens and black fur, a striking contrast to the Cap Tin. 

 

“Teree,” he said, and bowed. They responded in kind and were silent. It seemed all were waiting for another to speak. Finally, Teree gave in. “It is an honour to meet you, Com Man Dar Spock.”

 

“I am gratified,” the telepath responded. “You are the first to speak these words sincerely.”

 

He blushed verdant in response, eyestalks drooping a little. 

 

“I mean no offence.” The Com Man Dar's burble was lighter, more even. His Cap Tin hushed him. 

 

“I am not shamed, merely grieved, by the fallibility of my fellow beings. I must encourage them to realise their mistake.” He made to bow and leave, feeling a strange discomfort standing before these men who, with their very presence, seemed to have exposed darkness in many Pouy.

 

“Don't go!” Kirk said. “I wanted to... thank you, for your kind words yesterday, I mean, and see if I can convince you to tell Spock about your philosophy. He's, ah, fascinated.” This was another word filled with laughter, deep and joyful. Teree received it and put it away in his memory. Another treasure fit for quiet meditation.

 

And indeed, Teree found himself drawn into a long discussion about the practical application of peace and control, whether it was born from religion or survival. Close to the end, Spock asked, “How did you and the Captain meet?”

 

Teree swayed his eyestalks in consideration, then decided to reveal, “I came upon him after he had finished a discussion with you. He was brought to Contemplate the Divine." What it meant, he had explained earlier.  "It was my pleasure to assist.”

 

Spock lifted a strip of fur above his eye. “What was the subject of his contemplation?”

 

“You,” Teree was happy to inform him, especially when this seemed to inspire a similar flourishing of joy in the Com Man Dar as it had in the Cap Tin. It came on slower, this swell of happiness, but it was a momentous wave that crashed over all those present in the room, made eyes turn to the man that seemed entirely unaffected to the five physical senses.

 

“Excuse me,” he said and walked with large steps to where the Cap Tin had been drawn into dancing a reel with the queen. They had stopped, and Kirk was now bent over a tangle of bodies, attempting to right the queen. He was unable to, because Spock dragged him from the room.

 

The conclusion of that discussion would remain a mystery, aside from the swell of happiness that remained present throughout the evening, and softened or even ended the discussions about the relationship between the Cap Tin and Com Man Dar. 

 

For all good must flow from God, and the sensation that wrapped itself around everyone's hearts could not be anything but good. Teree's eyestalks wiggled in glee, hands clasped before him as he meditated upon joy in a corner of that crowded hall.

 


End file.
